


What Makes Him Happy

by lodgedinmythoughts



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Fix-It, Gen, Introspection, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Other, POV Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter - Freeform, Practically no dialogue, Self-Reflection, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve still passes on the shield but stays in the present and everything is okay, character study of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 22:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19160131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodgedinmythoughts/pseuds/lodgedinmythoughts
Summary: "What makes you happy?" Sam once asked him. And all he could say back was, "I don't know."-or-The one where Steve decides to stay.





	What Makes Him Happy

There are many things Steve knows.

He knows the warmth of the rising sun, the color of its rays behind closed lids. He knows the softness of your skin, the sensation of your fingers entangled with his, the overwhelming tenderness stirring in his chest when you lock eyes and your fragile, beautiful spirit dances behind your eyes with every smile you gift him with.

He knows how it feels to finally have the frayed threads of his weary soul reattach themselves gradually and delicately, like a watchmaker tinkering away on his own creation with every last bit of care he can afford. He knows what it is to keep secrets locked up tight, secrets that could make or break everything, wondering if it’s right or wrong and desperately wishing he had the answers.

He knows how it feels to finally admit he’s tired, so tired. He knows the newfound freedom of his once battered hands, unshackled as they are from the staunch determination to see justice through at the cost of his wellbeing. He knows what it means to reconcile that unwavering sense of duty with the value of his own needs, to be able to breathe again, and to allow himself a rest at last.

He knows what it is to lose, to keep losing and losing with no end in sight and wonder just how much the universe can keep taking from him. He knows how it feels to be beaten down and still possess enough foolhardy persistence to stand off alone against an insurmountable army with nothing but a shield as broken as him.

Steve knows many things, but above all, he knows that he knows nothing at all.

**. . .**

He’d already said his goodbyes to her that day at the funeral, and many days thereafter in the quiet solitude of his room. He’d finally let her go, her words of how she’d lived her life and that her only regret was that he didn’t get to live his echoing through his mind day in and day out.

She’d gone on to help found S.H.I.E.L.D., the very organization that was an inexorable part of him for so long. She’d moved on, started over, and experienced joy and pain and everything in between that constituted a human life. But it was hers, every second, and he could never take that from her, even if staying behind would have meant creating a new reality, a new timeline, and all those other things people far more knowledgeable than him could properly expound on.

It would have been fair to no one—not him, not her, not Bucky, not you, not the family he’d found and fought alongside—and at one point, against. But that was family. Their stories were too intertwined, their bond too significant, too rare to abandon at the chance of escaping to a rose-tinted fantasy of the past.

And beside everything else, he knew. He knew Peggy wouldn’t have had it. Any of it.

He could never lie to her, not like that, and so he’d have to tell her who he was, where he came from, and let it go unspoken, always hanging in the air, that he would never truly be _her_ Steve. There would still be a version of himself tucked away in that ice, the version of Bucky whom he could save but who would never truly be _his_ Bucky.

She would have shaken her head, whispered, “Oh, Steve,” and told him with hurt in her eyes and in her heart that he needed to go back. That knowing what he knew, and after everything he’d gone through and seen, he could never be truly happy in the past.

Maybe in the beginning they might have fooled themselves into thinking it could be okay. Maybe they would have shared that dance. But from then on, it would only be a charade, a lie, a meticulously placed shiny veneer, aided by the false sense of security given by the smooth but oh, so unsettling crooning coming from the phonograph in the corner.

He would have always felt a profound sense of being out of place, out of time, one far more disturbing than what he’d initially felt upon waking to a new century.

Homesickness. He’d always want to laugh at the irony.

After waking up from the ice, he would have given anything to go back. He’d yearned for it with every fiber of his being, had felt it in his soul. But twelve years in the present, twelve arduous and rewarding years of discovering and adapting and _experiencing_ had somehow managed to temper that once bone-deep longing to return home without his even knowing it.

Because he’d found it again. Home. Had even said so when Sam asked him what their next destination was after being on the run for two years. Sam had asked, “Where to, Cap?” and with only the clear picture of the compound and its inhabitants in his mind’s eye, he’d answered, “Home.”

He’d once made a promise, he knows. The promise of a dance, a dance he missed. He’d made it knowing in his bones he would never get to keep it. They’d both known. But it would never be. They were two ships passing in the night. It was something she’d lived with, and something he’d grown to live with as well.

Because that promise wasn’t the only promise he’d made.

Bucky wouldn’t have tried stopping him if he’d decided to go back, would have underplayed his sorrow, but even after decades apart, Steve would have seen right through it. Bucky was his brother whom he’d fought tirelessly for, spilled _blood_ for, both from himself and from others. Time had tethered them together irrevocably, and though that line had come dangerously close to snapping on more than one occasion, it was never severed.

While he still lived and breathed, Steve wouldn’t let the end of that line come just yet.

Peggy had lived her life. And now, it was time for him to do the same.

He would do it if he wanted to honor her memory the way she deserved, the same way she did his by keeping his picture on her desk even after all that time. A reminder of what she fought for, the legacy she sought to protect and have prosper.

He would do the same if it meant he could at last start on the road to recovery. He would do it all if it meant he got to do it with you.

So when he’s now presented with the question of what makes him happy, he finds it’s no longer such a battle to find that elusive answer. He doesn’t have to think so hard about it anymore. He’s happy with you at his side, and though you have your own demons to fight, he feels a strength he’s never felt before.

He traces your features with soft eyes as you sleep beside him, commits them to memory as if he hasn’t already done so, and he’s never been more certain that he has something to live for, here, now. He’s always had something to live for, he realizes.

“You’ve done your part, Steve,” you told him after he came back from returning the stones. Your hand was so warm on his arm. It was a touch he could see himself all too quickly becoming addicted to, and when you pulled away, he had to resist the urge to reach out and put it back. “More than enough. You’ve fought the fight, and now you can be free. Go. Live. Take care of yourself. There are others who will run toward the fight. We’re in good hands.”

“What about you? What’ll you do?” he asked.

You looked away, squinted against the sunlight skimming across the lake. “I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t the life for me anymore. Maybe it never was. But hey, I got to know everyone. I got to know you.” Then you gave him a poor excuse for a smile, and it tore at his heart.

Later, he’d find out just what that broken half-smile meant.

“It’s not enough,” you revealed late one night when the world was still and quiet and it was just the two of you. You were unable to look him in the eye. “There’s nothing I can say to show how much I…how much I _want_.”

In an instant, he understood. Because he felt the very same.

And together, you learned how to heal.

What he feels for you is too strong, too _much_ to put into words. It’s a bevy of emotions whose magnitude is far too immense to be contained inside his transient body.

He watches you sleep, and he wonders if you’d mind if he sketched you. The beauty he sees in you is too transcendent to be translated to paper. It’s too extraordinary for his mortal hands, too intangible. It’s beyond the mere physical, and it tugs at something deep within him whenever his eyes have the fortune of alighting on you. Nothing could capture what he sees when he sees you.

Still, he tries.

He could be an artist, they tell him. He could be anything.

Maybe he will.

He knows not what tomorrow holds in store, or the next day, or the day after that. And he’s okay with it.

He has everything he needs with him right here, right now. And for the first time in a long time, he knows.

He can be happy again.


End file.
